Trylove

Featuring special guests Jenny Ackerson and Griffin Fillipitch! Floriography holds that honeysuckle connotes everlasting devotion. How fitting, then, that Henry Neff never notices the honeysuckle (or love, or deception) until it’s too late. Actually, by the time anyone realizes what’s right in front of them in Billy Wilder’s seminal noir DOUBLE INDEMNITY, things are out of their hands. If only the...

Orson Welles called SORRY, WRONG NUMBER "the greatest single radio script ever written". It does not translate so well to film. But it IS really fun to examine with 72 years of perspective. How did the ways we communicate change when we brought telephones, formerly an element of commercial and industrial society, into our homes? What kinds of stories and performances were created when we chose to...

Featuring special guest Seth Zarate (@snzarate)! Our Friedkin series comes to a close with TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., a cynical forebearer of the modern buddy cop movie – a slick, seething, uncompromising movie with something up its sleeve and a lot on its mind. Follow Seth on Twitter at https://twitter.com/snzarate and on Letterboxd at http://letterboxd.com/snzarate Follow us on Twitter at https://...

If THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971) is about the futility of the chase, SORCERER is about escapes as hollow as they are narrow. In this episode, we discuss the movie’s relationship to bootstraps capitalism, its contemporary reception, and how nobody really gets out alive. Then, we get a little genre-obsessed in another edition of Cody’s Noteys! Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/trylovepodcast and em...

THE FRENCH CONNECTION is known for one great chase scene, but it’s actually a constant pursuit of the self through grimy Brooklyn, breezy Marseilles, and the dark hearts of evil men. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: "Subway" by Don Ellis from THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971).

On this episode, we’re thrilled to welcome Sam Waymon, composer and actor in several Bill Gunn films and brother of soul legend Nina Simone, to talk about GANJA & HESS (1973), Sam’s film debut. We discuss Sam’s approach to creating music, writing for such a specific vision and his involvement in creating that vision, the renewed attention on Sam’s first movie, and the importance of preserving...

The titular invisible man might not be struggling with any deeper discomforts than the madness brought on by the drug that makes his skin disappear, but that might be traumatizing enough. It's definitely enough to whip the residents of Iping, Sussex, into a proper frenzy – along with, you've gotta imagine, moviegoers in 1933. While we find it hard to knock 90-year-old movies for not being very ins...

Experimental Black horror film GANJA & HESS is tough to pin down, despite a simple synopsis (doctor cursed to crave blood shares his curse with another before succumbing to it himself). It packages much of its text inside a fractured storytelling framework, which seems to have dominated its critical appraisal in the decades since its release. In this episode, we wrangle with that discourse and...

We’re in full goofball mode for BLACK MAGIC 2, a fun artifact of the changing world of Hong Kong cinema in the 1970s. With a “please ignore this” plot and gross-out moments to spare, you could call it a subversion of the soap opera dramas that dominated the 1940s and ‘50s… or you could call it a really silly, fun way to spend 90 minutes with friends. “Black Magic and Sleazy Spells: The Shaw Brothe...

Featuring returning guest Nick Ransbottom (twitter.com/theeziokenway)! A bit of a riff on THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957)’s dour upholding of Christian values, THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH is more about seeing how camp can drive a point home in a completely different way. In this episode, we chat about what it borrows from serious gothic horror including the Poe story of the same name, what’s lost and gain...

Featuring returning guest Nick Ransbottom (https://twitter.com/theeziokenway)! The inherent conservatism of the horror genre isn’t spared in FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980), the seminal slasher film that, at least in retrospect, earns its keep as a bit of a commercial riff on the genre. It might not be the most high-concept use of horror’s toolkit (i.e., external violence addressing intergenerational anxie...

Featuring special guest Taylor Zastrow (@teeemotional)! In Gil Junger’s directorial debut 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, there’s a little bit more than a ‘90s teen adaptation of Shakespeare. “Don't let anyone, ever, make you feel like you don't deserve what you want,” says Heath Ledger’s Patrick Verona, acknowledging the contractual nature of self-fulfillment: one’s pursuit of happiness, the world’s...

For better and worse, Ingmar Bergman's 1957 historical fantasy epic THE SEVENTH SEAL has quite a reputation. Since establishing his career as one of the preeminent auteurs of his time, Bergman's spiritually-charged tale of a crusader confronting his mortality as he journeys home across plague-stricken Europe has been both celebrated and dismissed as intellectual, philosophical, austere, and unappr...

Through the not-so-straight-laced English mouthpieces of A FISH CALLED WANDA, you’re meant to feel the profound repression of being British – akin to being dead, as John Cleese's Archie Leach says – and then laugh at the morbidity of it all with the help of often morally objectionable humor. A jewel heist gone wrong at the last minute leaves American and British double-crossers spiraling, connecti...

Featuring special guest and heist film aficionado Matt Clark (@TheMplsMatt)! This Ealing train keeps a-rolling with another comedy of errors! Alec Guinness (again?) is Dutch, a bean-counter who’s protected government gold for 20 years, quietly plotting ways to rip them off in a big way. His plan accelerates beyond sustainability when he meets Al, an artist-turned-tchotchke maker with dreams of pur...

A comedy classic or a flat farce? THE LADYKILLERS is pretty Ealing through and through, and it opts for a directness and simplicity that can come off as uninspired instead of prototypical – Alec Guinness aside. It’s probably the most approachable of the Ealing films we’ve covered so far, but is it one of the better? The boys are split as a Classic Grossman Ranking Mandate rears its ugly head! Stic...

Featuring special guest and Hollywood film star Jason Statham! Jason Statham (UK actor, former model, husband of Rosie Huntington-Whitely, and star of the later films in CRANK (2006), SNATCH (2000), THE TRANSPORTER (2002), the blockbuster Fast & Furious franchise), and more joins us to talk, appropriately, about a deeply British film! Without a stronger commitment to its premise (a Central Lon...

CW: A racial slur appears several times toward the end of this film. We talk about that. Over the course of a darkly comic scenario that veers between dry and madcap, KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS takes jabs at the aristocracy through the eyes of one who would be them, resulting in some fun dissonance between medium and message. In it, Alec Guinness is poisoned, Alec Guinness is incinerated, Alec Guinn...

CW: Discussions of suicide and sexual assault as plot elements. A wacky entry in the "just tryin' to get home" genre, Martin Scorsese's post-THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST kickstarter couldn't be more indispensable. Both pointed critique of Reagan-era exceptionalism and pastiche of 20 years of Hollywood preceding its release, AFTER HOURS pits Griffin Dunne's entitled yuppie against a single night w...

A not-so-traditional tale of witchcraft, the search for belonging, and how goddamn hard it can be to find. Buy tickets for Trylon Cinema showings at www.trylon.org/. Follow us at @trylovepodcast on Twitter and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail.com to get in touch! Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music from "THE JUNIPER TREE".

Content warning: Discussions of onscreen depictions of animal abuse. THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN scraps a lot of classic tension-building elements in favor of a painstakingly detailed, process-focused look at how scientists, citizens, and the American government would respond to a viral outbreak with global lethal potential. It ends up feeling a bit clinical, sure, but there's a charming dedication to it...

Featuring special guest and Trylon film programmer John Moret! Film discussion begins at 13:26. The Trylon's first in-theater showing since March, Joe Cornish's sci-fi/horror/comedy/commentary mashup directorial debut ATTACK THE BLOCK touches on just enough 2020-adjacent themes (Black oppression, social confinement, the dangers of the outside world, the villainous police state) to make it a super-...

When hitmen Kamimura and Shun are made pawns in yakuza territorial pissings, they've got to rely on each other and a band of bargefolk to make it out alive. Part spaghetti western, part yakuza film, part spy fiction, and part drama, A COLT IS MY PASSPORT forces its audience to see much of its worthwhile cast through its protagonist's eyes (for better or worse). Follow us at @trylovepodcast on Twit...

Featuring special guest Matt Clark (@themplsmatt)! Though it might not reach the dramatic highs of the movies it's comprised of, SHOGUN ASSASSIN is an interesting artifact of film localization that manages to be super fun (not to mention influential). We finally enlisted Matt Clark to help us unpack the special 36 Chambers screening we caught in quarantine, which featured live commentary from RZA...

Featuring special guest Jenny Ackerson (@AckersonJenny)! Tsai Ming-liang's debut is much more than most summaries can tell you. Less a coming-of-age morality play amid 1990s Taipei than a tale about the downward emotional spiral of youth, REBELS OF THE NEON GOD is a work fueled by empathy and the struggle to find oneself amid urban decay, social prescriptivism, and expectations of mythological pro...